CSotD: It’s all in the delivery
Skip to comments
It's not the gag that kills in today's Edison Lee — it's the looks of horror on the kids' faces.
Coming up with a good gag is about one-eighth of the job. Delivery is everything else. There have been more than one occasion when a strip hasn't made this page because, while the gag was good, the cartoonist fumbled, a verb I don't select lightly — he had it in his hands but he couldn't control it and it hit the ground. As the ex-jock in the booth would say, "They pay you to catch those."
Example #1: There was a good pun in a strip last week that I really liked, except that, in the third panel, the cartoonist distanced himself from his own joke with one of those "I know I'm going to hate myself for asking …" disclaimers. That works in Abbott & Costello routines, where Abbott's disdain for his partner is part of the set-up and is there to build audience sympathy for Costello, but it doesn't work in most cartoons — If you can't stand by your own gag, find another gag.
Another example was a strip, also in the last week or two, in which the punchline was telegraphed by a sign in the third panel identifying something that figured into the pun. By drawing attention to it before the gag was delivered, it completely blunted the impact. (In that case, I figure there's at least a chance an editor asked to have the sign added, feeling the joke was too obscure. The joke was not too obscure. But now it was too obvious.)
The third way to screw it up is with some variation on fourth-panel plewds. Plewds are the flying sweat droplets, which, in Mutt & Jeff cartoons, are accompanied by flying hats and, in extreme cases, fainting. Modern cartoonists are too hip to use plewds, but too many of them use the fourth panel to, once more, distance themselves from their own joke, often with "I hate you" or some other hostile response to the punchline. Again, if you can't stand by the joke, think up one you are willing to put your name on.
In this case, John Hambrock uses the fourth panel for reaction, but the reaction enhances the joke: Edison's opponent is as horror-stricken as the kids in the third panel, reinforcing the response, while Edison recognizes something has gone amiss but is woefully unaware of what it could have been. It's not quite a Gracie Allen take, because he does recognize that it didn't work, but it's similar in that he is so wrapped up in his own persona that he can't see how what he did impacted someone else.
When you can deliver a gag like this, you don't need to come up with one-of-a-kind, timeless gags that will live in history. It's all in the presentation.
Comments 1
Comments are closed.